But the Sydney Morning Herald said it could amount to a case of mistaken address, with former News Ltd chairman Ken Cowley the next-door neighbour of the victim in Sydney's leafy suburb of Mosman.

The newspaper said court documents reveal that a week before he broke into the Pulver home, masked and carrying a baseball bat, Peters approached a man he knew who lived in the same street, and it was Mr Cowley.

It said Peters told police he met Mr Cowley in the late 1980s when the executive was running the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong.